


Fresh Start

by mcicioni



Category: The Magnificent Seven (1960)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, F/m sex (between two OCs; mostly implied), M/M, M/m sex (mostly implied)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25502110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mcicioni/pseuds/mcicioni
Summary: This piece can be read as a stand-alone or as a possible sequel to "Four Nights in September".Soon after they leave the Mexican village, Chris and Vin find jobs at a stagecoach relay station. Not all of Calvera's men are dead and gone.
Relationships: Chris Adams/Vin
Comments: 17
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warm thanks to Darcyone for clever comments on language and content, BethLange for encouragement, and Sindarina for so much perceptive sharing.
> 
> Part 2 will be uploaded some time next week.

Lupe steps out on the porch, trying to bend backwards without groaning. She cleaned the kitchen and the privy after the afternoon stage left, then she started dinner and put some laundry to soak for tomorrow. Nothing really heavy, but she tires easily these days, she gets short of breath, her legs swell up, and her hearing isn’t what it used to be.

She looks east towards the town of Socorro, then up towards the Magdalena Mountains, glad that her eyes are still as sharp as they were forty years ago, when she was a young bride and could already shoot straighter than Dave, who had taught her. The last rays of the September sun are shining over the buildings of what she and Dave optimistically named “The Flanagan Ranch and Relay Station”: the house, the two corrals, both with wobbly posts and rails, the bunkhouse with its door that can’t quite shut properly, the barn, the privy, and the water tower that is beginning to list sideways. It takes Dave quite a while now to notice what needs fixing, and it takes him longer still to get around to fixing it. As _los americanos_ say, neither of them is getting any younger. But, as Lupe’s family used to say, _paciencia y barajar_ , be patient and keep going. They’d had a hired hand, but he was getting old too, and two months ago he caught a fever and died. She and Dave, resignedly rather than enthusiastically, put the word out that they now needed _two_ live-in hands. Preferably under fifty. 

Someone called Chris Adams wired them that he and a friend were willing and able to do the job. Dave wired back. So tonight they’re coming. Lupe sighs deeply.

“They should be here any time now.” Dave walks out of the privy and comes to stand beside her. Reading her thoughts as usual. He puts an arm around her shoulders, bending down a little, because he’s almost a foot taller than she is. “Yeah, things will change some if we take them on. But if we don’t, we’ll have to sell, sooner or later.” He squeezes her shoulders lightly. “A much bigger change.”

She knows. She turns towards him and nods, and his eyes smile at her among all the wrinkles, old and new. He must have left his spectacles somewhere. Again.

“I made a blueberry pie for them,” she says.

Dave stands up straighter, listening. Lupe watches him, trusting his ears much more than her own, and soon she sees two horses appear at the top of the small rise that leads down to their place. The horses are a bay and a sorrel, the bay leggy and frisky, the sorrel tall and solid, with a long honey-coloured mane. Then she looks up at the riders. The man on the sorrel is wearing black from his hat to his boots, the one on the bay a shirt and jeans that have seen many better days. Both have coiled ropes hanging from their saddle horns, Winchesters in scabbards, and handguns in holsters tied to their thighs.

They ride up to the ranch buildings, dismount, and tip their hats to Lupe and Dave. “I’m Chris Adams,” the one in black says. He’s in his early forties and has dark, piercing eyes and a serious expression. He also seems to have shaved off all of his hair; Lupe is puzzled by this, but knows her manners and doesn’t stare. “Vin Staberg,” his companion says, with a small smile that opens up the deep creases at the sides of his mouth. He’s a few years younger than Adams and seems to be just as competent and self-assured. A little shudder of uncertainty runs down Lupe’s back as her eyes travel from one to the other: they’re not ranch hands, she can tell from the way they carry themselves, and the way their gun holsters are placed so as to be level with their wrists. Are she and Dave inviting trouble into their home?

“Dave Flanagan.” Dave holds out a hand, and they shake. “My wife, Guadalupe.” Adams and Staberg nod pleasantly.

“Please call me Lupe, everybody does.”

“Thanks,” Staberg smiles again. “He’s Chris. I’m Vin.”

Dave scratches the bridge of his nose. “In your wire, you said that you had a letter of recommendation from the sheriff of that border town. About some good deed the two of you did in that town a couple of months back.”

“Yeah.” Staberg pulls two envelopes out of his breast pocket and hands them over. “The other one’s a letter from the town undertaker. The job we did was for him, and we didn’t get one scratch on his stylish new hearse.”

  
  


A week has gone by. The wobbly poles of the corral are now steady in their new deep holes. The door of the bunkhouse opens and shuts easily, without a single squeak. The two daily stages, one early in the morning, the other mid-afternoon, are swiftly emptied and hosed down and the horses are changed with fresh ones while the passengers clean themselves up and eat at the big kitchen table. And, hopefully before October and cold weather arrive, a new barbed-wire fence will keep the fifteen or so head of the optimistically-named Flanagan herd safely inside the Flanagan grounds. Things get done before Lupe or Dave mention them; at times, things get done before Lupe and Dave realise that they need doing.

The two new hands are respectful and polite, giving each other warning looks every time their language is about to stray from what’s acceptable in front of ladies. During the day, they work separately or together, communicating almost wordlessly: a quick look, a nod, a hand movement are enough. At night, sometimes Chris and Dave play chess while Vin reads a newspaper and mocks the politicians’ promises. Occasionally the four of them play poker for matchsticks, but Lupe and Dave tend to run out of matchsticks in less than an hour.

Lupe asks permission and washes and mends their clothes; if she and Dave had had adult sons, she would have done it for them.

“Don’t get too fond of them,” Dave warns Lupe. “They’re drifters. And they’re gunslingers: the sheriff told me that the two of them and a handful of other Americans travelled to a village in Mexico and wiped out most of Calvera’s band.”

Calvera’s name was known on both sides of the border, and the two of them had heard what happened to him and his men. She shudders: she had guessed right on the first day. But strangely enough, she feels safer with Chris and Vin around.

  
  


One late afternoon Chris and Vin borrow the big washtub and a bucket. A little later, Lupe wants to bring in the washing, and walks to the back of the house with no thought for what she might see. Vin is in the tub, scrubbing away at his neck, chest and armpits, and Chris, bare-headed and wearing only his long johns, is behind him, scrubbing his back, slowly, fingers tracing the patterns of freckles on Vin’s shoulders. Lupe cries _Discúlpenme_ , gathers up her washing as quickly as possible, and retreats with lowered eyes. But, try as she might not to peek at either of them, she can’t help noticing the bulge in Chris’s underwear, and the way his other hand is in the bathwater, reaching for something else somewhere further down.

That night, in bed, she tells Dave. “Like … that day. With Ramón.”

Dave holds her tight. They weren’t yet married, and he was not with her, on the day her father found her brother Ramón in the stable with the neighbours’ son. In the square, before the whole village, both fathers whipped their sons bloody, told them that they weren’t men and that they were a shame to their families, and sent them away, ordering them never to show their faces again. Lupe and her mother were too afraid of her father’s heavy fists to say anything. Later, when she told Dave about it, Lupe asked him if he – now that he knew about the lost honour of her family – wanted to be released from his promise to marry her. He cried with her about Ramón, and said that the next day he’d go straight to the priest and bring the wedding date forward.

She wipes her eyes. “Ramón and Daniel were men,” she says fiercely, still angry at her father, at her village, and at herself for her cowardice. “And so are Chris and Vin.”

“And what they do when they’re alone ain’t nobody’s business but their own,” Dave says mildly, and his eyes are full of tenderness as he caresses her shoulder under her nightgown for a little while before moving his hand lower and cupping her breast. “ _¿Te apetece … ?_ ”

He’s always asked her, in her language, if she felt like it, from their wedding night on. It has become part of their ritual, like her little hum as he pulls up her nightgown. There’s still passion in their bodies, and they happily give themselves to it, sagging breasts, wrinkled torso and soft bellies be damned. Chris and Vin are completely forgotten.

  
  


It’s evening, supper is over, the horses have been tended and the dishes have been washed and dried. Lupe, Chris and Dave are teaching Vin how to say simple things in Spanish, or ask questions, or do sums, and they all shut him up when he starts telling them the cautionary tale of a “fella” he knew in San Antonio, who tried to learn too many languages and ended up not saying anything that made sense in any of them, including English. Lupe laughs: when he and Chris move on, she will miss Vin’s “fellas” and the awful things that happened to every one of them. She does not doubt for a minute that they will move on: sometimes she sees Vin pacing around the buildings he helped to fix, sometimes she spots him sitting on the top rail of the corral and staring off into the distance, at the mountains ahead, at the places he hasn’t seen yet. And she sees Chris watching him and frowning a little, not saying anything, before going back to doing whatever it is that needs doing.

“ _Eso es un caballo_ ,” Vin laughs, jerking his head towards the door, and he’s right, a horse has just stopped outside it. Lupe goes to open the door: it’s Jim Raines, the deputy sheriff of Socorro. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry, but he’s concerned about something, and he gets to the point right after they have sat him down with a cup of coffee and a slice of cake.

“My cousin Bill works at the Triple Eight, down close to the border.” He glances at Chris and Vin, then looks away. “The story of Calvera’s band and the _gringo_ gunfighters who destroyed it is becoming almost a legend on the other side of the river.” He pauses, takes a breath. “Only, the band hasn’t been completely destroyed. Bill told me that a dozen or so men have got back together, and they’ve started threatening a couple of small border villages. Demanding protection money, that sort of thing.”

He stops and sighs. “I wouldn’t have bothered you if that was all. Between us lawmen on this side of the river and the _rurales_ on the other side, we should be able to deal with a small band of outlaws. Except that … Bill told me that the band may be heading for Socorro. They’ve heard that two of the _gringo_ gunfighters now live around here, and they want revenge."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to darcyone, without whom I'd be doomed to write in what linguists call _interlanguage_. Thanks also to Linda and Hal for Americanisms, and to Sindarina and BethLange for continuing support.

“We never thought that all of Calvera’s men were dead,” Vin says. “Some ran off, this way and that. We thought they’d scatter every which way, not that they’d get together all over again.”

“We were too busy counting our own losses,” Chris says quietly.

Jim Raines sighs. “Look. With all due gratitude to you two, and to your friends who didn’t make it … what the sheriff and I want most of all is to keep any shooting away from the town. From our families, our homes. Our businesses. So, the best we can do is ask a couple of men to stick around here, just in case. But not indefinitely. You know.” 

“We do,” Chris says, his mouth twisting a little, and stands up. Vin does likewise, and they’re out of the door, heading for the bunkhouse, their movements swift and controlled.

“Yeah. You made your point, Deputy Raines,” Dave says, his tone colder than an ice storm in January. “Be seeing you in town.” He walks to the door and holds it open. Raines shrugs, mutters “I’m sorry,” and leaves. Dave and Lupe move closer together, waiting.

Chris and Vin step back inside. They are wearing their heavy jackets and carrying bedrolls and Winchesters. For a moment Lupe feels the shiver of the first day run through her spine: both have behaved fine with her and Dave, but they bring trouble, just as she had feared. Maybe it’s a good thing that they’re leaving.

“Dave, Lupe,” Chris says. “It was good working for you. But the last thing we want is to put you in any danger. We'll deal with Calvera's men. Good luck.” He shakes hands with Dave, tips his hat to Lupe, and turns towards the door. Vin nods, half-smiles at them, and follows Chris.

Lupe mentally slaps herself in the face, hard. _Cobarda_ , she silently screams at herself – for the second time there are people in trouble right next to her, and she’s too scared to lift a finger. Then she squares her shoulders. No – this time she’s her own woman, this time it’s different.

She consults Dave with a quick look, and as soon as he nods she almost shouts, “Wait. Please wait.”

They half-turn and look at her.

“You owed nothing to the people of that village,” Lupe says. “Yet you helped them. Let us help you.”

Vin takes his hat off, turns it around in his hands. “A kind thought, ma’am. But we’ve been takin care of ourselves for a long time. And there’s no point in you people gettin hurt in somethin that has nothin to do with you.”

“Especially,” and Chris gives them one of his rare smiles, warm and just a little ironic, “since, as you yourselves say, you’re no spring chickens.”

Dave grins back at him, then points to four County Fair shooting trophies, neatly lined up on a shelf. “You never asked us about those. Who d’you think won ‘em?” And he winks at Lupe, who instantly flushes.

Dave thoroughly enjoys the expressions on the faces of his hired hands. “Mrs Flanagan here may not be a spring chicken, but she’s better with a rifle than me and most of the men I know.” A moment’s pause. “With my specs on, I ain’t bad with a handgun either.” 

“This time your targets are apt to shoot back,” Vin says mildly.

“Neither of us has ever shot at a man,” Lupe replies. “But we’ve always known that a day might come when we’d have to defend ourselves. Or our friends.”

Chris and Vin exchange a look. “They’re as stubborn as the Old Man in the village,” Chris says. 

“Yep,” Vin agrees. “But four of us against a dozen ain’t bad odds. Let’s figure out how we should play it.”

“I reckon that we should wait for them to come to us, here,” Dave says, looking at Chris and Vin for agreement. “In the woods, four against twelve, we would be in trouble. If we stay here, we can try to lower the odds before they show up.”

Chris looks away, his lips tightening. “I tried to lower the odds with Calvera, one night,” he says. “It cost us a lot.”

“The things I have in mind shouldn’t cost us anything,” Dave says. “If they work.”

That night, after Dave has gone to sleep, Lupe slides out of bed and goes down to her knees. She asks the Lord, once more, to forgive her for her cowardice on that day forty years ago. For her man and for these two other men, young enough to be the sons she never bore, she asks that no outlaw band may turn up at Flanagan’s Ranch. For herself, she asks for courage and strength, and steady hands and straight aim if shooting can’t be avoided.

In the three days that follow, the four of them work hard inside the ranch buildings as well as outdoors. Dave warns everyone not to use the bigger of their two ladders if they ever need to go up to the top of the barn: there are several layers of grease and soap on it. Lupe and Dave use sandpaper, wire brushes and a lot of elbow grease on a rusty bear trap they found in the barn. Chris and Vin nail loops of barbed wire on all the roofs, in the places which are easiest to climb. 

And then, they wait. The morning and afternoon stages arrive and leave. The men tend the buildings, the horses and the cattle. Lupe cooks, sews, does the washing, prays that the intruders may change their mind, and keeps the Winchester oiled and ready.

Five days after Jim Raines’s visit, young Wes Garrett from the grocery store rides up on his father’s old mare. “Got a letter for you, Mr Flanagan. From the sheriff.”

Dave gets his spectacles from his shirt pocket and starts reading.

_“Dear Dave, this is to inform you that a couple of men asked for your whereabouts in town. Then they rode out. Jim followed them. There’s about a dozen of them, camped near Box Canyon. Jim and I and the other deputies will ride over at daybreak.. Watch yourselves tonight. Sincerely, John Paxton (Sheriff)._

“Guess they couldn’t do without a good night’s sleep,” smirks Vin, while Dave sighs and puts letter and spectacles into his shirt pocket. Then Vin turns to Lupe: “You watch yourself, Guadalupe Flanagan,” he says, a little grin belying the stern words.

Chris smiles, his features softening for a moment.

Vin looks him over: “What’s funny?”

“Oh, just remembering something O’Reilly said one night,” Chris says slowly. “Bernardo O’Reilly. He said something about his family, Mexican on one side, Irish on the other, and him in the middle.”

“Our kids would have been like that,” Dave says. “If we’d had any. In the middle, loved by both sides.”

“We’d have loved them whatever they did,” Lupe says, thinking of men loving other men and of men becoming professional gunfighters. She sees a swift glance flash between Chris and Vin, and immediately moves to something real, practical. “We should take turns keeping watch.”

“Yeah,” Vin says. “You two youngsters hit the sack, we’ll rouse you in four or five hours.” He waves Chris out of the door, and the two of them go off towards the bunkhouse, to collect rifles and bullets.

Dave goes out the other way, towards the privy. Lupe steps out of the door, looks up to the starred sky, tries to control the shivers chasing one another through her body at the thought of tomorrow, or maybe of any time from now. She looks at the bunkhouse, sees the light of a lamp, and hears voices.

She is a principled woman, but tonight it’s different, none of them may be alive in a few hours. She walks noiselessly to the nearest wall, next to the half-open window. She smells cigar smoke and can just about make out what Chris and Vin are saying.

“We knew we’d stay and fight,” Vin is saying. “The moment we heard about Calvera’s men.”

“So?” Chris asks sharply. “The only other option was running. And spending the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders. Separately or together.”

“Well. _That_ would make some difference.” Vin’s voice is low, teasing. Then it changes, becomes serious. “Of course we couldn’t run. Fightin back is what we do. More ‘n that. It’s what we _are_. Until the day we run out of luck and catch our last bullet.”

“No,” Chris says, as firm and controlled as Lupe has ever heard him. “Until the day we decide to quit.” He stops, and there’s no more tobacco smoke in the air, he must have put his cigar out. “If we both get out of this alive. …”

“Yeah. _If_ ,” and Lupe can’t tell if Vin is worried, or resigned, or both.

“I’ll throw my gun into the water bucket. And I’ll make sure you do likewise.”

“Oh, will you?” And now Vin is amused, his words a half-joking challenge. 

“Count on it.” And then neither of them speaks, and Lupe blushes from hairline to toes, because she can only half-hear the sounds and muffled moans inside, but she recognises them even though her experience is limited to the one man. She sees that the privy door is open, and she tiptoes to seek refuge there, a whole jumble of feelings making her go hot and cold and dizzy, just like the days when she was a young wife and she and Dave had finally got the hang of _things_ and just couldn’t stop practising.

When she gets back to the house, Chris and Vin are there, inspecting their weapons and looking as cool as cucumbers. Lupe nods goodnight to them and goes into the bedroom. She and Dave do not undress; they exchange one soft kiss and then lie on their bed side by side, holding hands, eyes closed, looking for sleep.

  
  


The crash of three shots fired in rapid succession makes Lupe scramble to her feet and carefully move to the window. She peers out, and in the grey light before dawn she can just make out Chris flat on his stomach on the roof of the barn and Vin standing sideways behind a corner of the bunkhouse. Two men are dead, one face down in the dust behind the bigger of the two corrals, the other tangled up in the barbed wire on the roof of the bunkhouse.

“Lupe, Dave!” shouts Chris. “Keep under cover.”

Dave shakes his head, sets his spectacles firmly on his nose, buckles on his gunbelt and gets hold of his rifle. “I’m going out to give them a hand. Break this windowpane, you can stay covered and take your time aiming.” He squeezes her shoulder, not softly as usual, hard enough to leave a mark. “I love you. Take care of yourself. And remember to stay away from the back door after I’ve gone out.”

“I love you,” she says, looking up into his eyes and managing to keep her voice steady. “You take care too. I know about the back door.” And sheis alone, her box of ammunition at her side, the Winchester in her sweaty hands. She smashes the windowpane with the stock of her rifle and rests the barrel on the sill. Outside, Dave is climbing up the smaller of the two ladders onto the roof of the barn. He exchanges a few words with Chris, who nods, points to the water tower, slides down a wall and is out of sight. 

The sky is going from dark to pale gray. Lupe looks around and freezes: three men are crouching between the bushes at the side of the road and slowly moving towards the house, one going to the front, the others to the back. She would like to shout at them to ride on, leave them alone, don’t risk killing and being killed, but she bites her lip hard, breathes deeply, takes aim and squeezes the trigger, like she did with foxes and wolves lurking near the ranch. The man near the front of the house shudders as the bullet slams into his chest, goes down to his knees and crumples down. As Lupe wipes her eyes, she hears a howl of pain rising from the back of the house – one of the other two men must have stepped into the bear trap Dave had set in the kitchen, near the back door, and is now caught in the jaws carefully sharpened by her and Dave.

An assortment of noises, screams and curses fills the house as the third man tries to free his companion. Quickly and silently Lupe gets out of the bedroom, walks past the second bedroom, steps into the kitchen and levels her Winchester at both men.

The one in the trap is Mexican, the other looks American; Lupe speaks in English. “Don’t try to shoot. Put your handguns on the floor.” 

The _americano_ laughs at her, stares into her eyes and reaches for his gun; Lupe shoots him in the arm; the shot reverberates around the kitchen, the sweetish smell of blood, mixed with the smell of gunpowder, fills her nose and mouth and makes her gag. The man drops his gun, face contorting in pain and anger. The Mexican in the trap manages to get his gun out and fire, but his eyes are blurred by pain, and his bullet nicks a wall close to Lupe’s head. Trying not to think that he’s young, and that he is one of her people, Lupe shoots him in the arm too, and calls out to Chris and Vin without taking her eyes or her gunsight off them.

Vin appears at the back door, looks around and nods to Lupe. With her still levelling her rifle at the intruders, he grabs a kitchen towel and ties it around the wounded arm of the _americano_ , then gets one of the ropes that they had carefully placed on the kitchen shelves and ties him up. He frees the man in the trap, ties rags around his leg and arm, and ties him up as well. As he and Lupe push the bandits down to the ground, they hear rifles blasting near the bunkhouse, and a loud crash followed by curses and two pistol shots near the barn.

Side by side, they peek out: Chris is exchanging rifle fire with two men sheltering behind the privy, Dave is nowhere to be seen. Vin gently pushes Lupe back inside, closes the door and circles the house. His handgun fires once; someone howls somewhere near the privy, then there’s silence. 

Her heart thumping, Lupe runs back to her bedroom window, where she can see the barn. Dave, unharmed, is tying up an unconscious man who must have tried to get to the roof using the bigger of the two ladders, the one greased from top to bottom. She breathes out in relief, and sees Chris racing from the bunkhouse – now there’s another body lying outside it – towards the corrals, where two men are trying to set fire to the rails. His shots ring out among the whinnying of the horses, and the men go down. Chris stomps out the sparks rising from the ground, then looks around and runs back towards the barn. Dave is back on the roof and is holding on to the ends of three ropes. He hands one to Vin, who has climbed up beside him, and throws one down to Chris.

From her window, Lupe can’t see the water tower, but she can see four shapes running towards it, two from the bunkhouse and two from the corrals. She brings her rifle to her shoulder, aims, breathes in and fires. One of the four shapes folds its arms around its body and falls twitching to the ground. Lupe’s eyes fill with burning tears, but she has always known that defending her place – and the two dangerous men she has grown fond of – would mean taking lives, and that each life will have to be paid for in sorrow and remorse, for months and years to come.

The loud clang of metal grinding jolts her out of her thoughts. There’s wood creaking, then a heavy thud, and sounds of water crashing, running feet, and shots and more shots. She knows what it is – she had listened to the three men plan things carefully, and she had seen them loosen the soil around the legs of the water tower so that three strong ropes and six strong arms could pull the legs, and the whole tower, down. Dave has got down from the roof and, without his spectacles, is splashing in the sodden ground beside Chris. Two bandits are also in the mud, up to their knees; one, dark-skinned, is aiming his sidearm at Dave, and Dave is fumbling with his holster, trying to draw his gun. Chris shoves him aside and shoots at the dark-skinned man, but at the same time the other bandit fires too, two shots. Dave falls, and Chris grimaces in pain as he clutches his left arm. Vin appears behind Chris, gun in hand, and fires two merciless bullets into the bandit’s chest.

Breathless and shaking, Lupe drops her rifle, runs to the front door and sprints towards Dave. “How bad is he hurt?” she whispers to Vin.

“Not bad. Take care of him,” and Vin rushes off again, firing as he runs, at another _americano_ who is attempting to shoot Chris in the back. 

The smell of blood almost overpowers her. _Tonta_ , she scolds herself, you have never fainted in sixty-one years, don’t you dare faint now. A deep red stain is spreading on Dave’s upper thigh, close to the hip. Lupe tears off her blouse and balls it up, pressing against the wound, willing the blood flow to stop. She keeps her eyes fixed on Dave’s: “Are you in pain?”

“ _No tan mal_ ,” he says, reassuring her in her language. “No worse … than the time … I got kicked by that mare.” He concentrates on breathing and keeping still, and she concentrates on tying strips of her skirt as tightly as she can around the wound, and on silently praying that this may be over at last, and that her man may pull through.

She hears clattering hooves, sees men dismounting, and Sheriff Paxton is standing over her and Dave. Her clothes are almost gone, but she’s past caring. “Mrs Flanagan. I have some experience with gun wounds. Let me look at Dave. One of my deputies has ridden off to get the doctor.”

Chris helps Lupe get up. He has a bandana tied tightly around his upper arm. “A flesh wound,” he says shortly, with an attempt at a shrug.

“Dave’s is more than that,” the sheriff says sombrely.

  
  


“He’s gone to sleep. I’ve given him enough laudanum to knock him out for hours. Quite a lot of damage to the muscles, quite a bit of pain ahead.” The doctor awkwardly pats Lupe’s shoulder. “You did a good job, Mrs Flanagan.” And he leaves her and goes to take care of Chris, the men she shot in the kitchen, and also two of their companions, caught by Deputy Raines and another deputy as they were riding away from Flanagan’s Ranch.

A couple of hours later, the sheriff, Lupe, Chris and Vin are drinking coffee at the kitchen table. The doctor has gone back to town with the two deputies, the wounded prisoners and nine corpses piled up on the floor of Lupe and Dave’s buckboard. 

“I really should wait for this until Dave wakes up, but you can talk to him and then let me know.” The sheriff takes a sheet of paper full of names and numbers out of his breast pocket and unfolds it on the table. “I did some homework on the pile of Wanted dodgers on my desk. Turns out that there are rewards on the heads of nearly all the men who attacked you.”

Lupe goes white. “Blood money?” 

“Lupe. You heard what the doctor said, Dave’ll never be able to ride again, and he’ll need to walk with a stick from now on. Not to mention that these jaspers were trying to kill you and Dave as well as Adams and Staberg.”

Lupe sighs. “This is important. Dave and I need to talk it over.”

“So do we.” Chris’s voice is firm, if slightly slurred from the whisky he drank before the doctor stitched him up. He looks faintly embarrassed by the sling supporting his arm. “And we need to know roughly how much money you’re talking about.”

The sheriff mutters under his breath, matching names and figures. “Vargas and Montero, wanted on both sides of the river, three thousand each … Ward, bank robbery, fifteen hundred … Diaz, rape and murder, four thousand … Ortiz, small fry, only three hundred …Hell, they had Sean Garry with them, he’s worth four thousand. The others are mostly no-account men, five hundred or so dollars each. Altogether, something in the neighbourhood of twenty thousand.”

“A respectable neighbourhood,” quips Vin. “Five grand apiece.”

“May I ask …” Lupe can’t restrain her curiosity. “If you decide to accept, what will you …”

“Depends,” Chris says.

“On what?”

Chris finds a cigar, lights it one-handedly. “On whether Mister Staberg here is ready to have a water bucket.”

The sheriff blinks, but refrains from asking. Lupe just smiles to herself. Vin runs a hand through his hair and gives Chris a long level look, as serious as Lupe has ever seen him. “Ready and willin. If you are.”

A cloud of dust appears at the top of the road. Lupe jumps up. “ _Madre de Dios_ , the afternoon stage.”

“Water.” Vin is already out of the door, heading for the well. “Lupe and I can manage, the driver and guard will lend a hand with the horses. No need for any other help.”

“Bossing me around, now,” Chris mutters, shaking his head and stepping out to fetch wood for the oven.

  
  


Two days later, after waving off the morning stage, the four of them squeeze into the Flanagan buckboard and visit the sheriff.

“Lupe and I have talked things over,” Dave begins. His voice is a little shaky and he makes visible efforts not to wince and gasp every time he moves. “We can’t stay at the ranch. I can’t do ranch work any more.”

“And, if we stayed on, every corner of the place would be full of memories of blood and death,” Lupe says, almost whispering as she adds, “And of the lives we have taken.”

“So today we’re going to wire my sister in Santa Fe,” Dave says, looking down at his hands splayed on his knees. “She and her husband’ll help us find a place somewhere near theirs. With a garden.” He looks at Lupe, sadness and hope fighting it out in his eyes. 

She squeezes his hand. “And we’re also going to find a lawyer. We’re selling our place to Chris and Vin. For their share of the …” she sighs softly before the next word, “rewards. We need to put all this in writing.”

The sheriff nods his approval. “Of course. You can never be too careful.”

A small dimple appears in Vin’s left cheek. “Reminds me of a fella I knew in Dodge,” he says. “Scared of catchin pneumonia. So he always went around covered up from head to foot, woollen underthings, scarves, gloves, you name it.”

“And ..?” Dave asks, resigned rather than curious. Lupe and Chris just look at each other.

“Died of sunstroke,” Vin says.


End file.
